DAILY PRESS BRIEFING OF OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL

Press Briefing

DAILY PRESS BRIEFING OF OFFICE OF SPOKESMAN FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL

Fred Eckhard, Spokesman for the Secretary-General, began today's noon briefing by reminding correspondents that the beginning of the year brought to Headquarters various executive boards of funds and programmes that were based in New York. The Spokesman's Office had been asking if there was anyone in town attending those meetings who might be of interest to correspondents.

As a consequence, at the briefing today was Paulo Lembo, the United Nations Resident Coordinator and Humanitarian Coordinator in Tajikistan. The United Nations operation in Tajikistan was somewhat under-reported, the Spokesman observed, so Mr. Lembo would talk about it to correspondents later in the briefing. (Mr. Lembo's briefing will be issued separately.)

The Spokesman then read a press statement from the Secretary-General on reported developments on East Timor:

"The Secretary-General welcomes the reports of two major announcements made in Jakarta with regard to the question of East Timor.

"1. The prospect of transferring the imprisoned leader of the National Council of Timorese Resistance, Xanana Gusmao, to residential detention.

"2. The reported willingness of the Indonesian Government to countenance the possibility of independence for East Timor if this were the wish of the people of the Territory.

"The United Nations is in the process of ascertaining the details of these reports.

"The Secretary-General has for some time now been urging the Indonesian Government to release Xanana Gusmao, whose role in the political process is of paramount importance. The Secretary-General hopes that it will soon be possible for Xanana Gusmao to actively participate in the political dialogue.

"In the meantime, the tripartite talks, which resume on 28 January, will continue to discuss the United Nations autonomy proposal. These discussions will doubtless take into account the latest developments.

"The Secretary-General would once again like to underline the need for maintaining peace and avoiding unnecessary violence and bloodshed in East Timor. He urges all parties concerned to show maximum restraint and political wisdom in dealing with this important period of transition.

"The Secretary-General remains committed to assisting all the parties concerned in their desire to find a just, comprehensive and internationally acceptable solution to the question of East Timor."

Mr. Eckhard said that the Security Council was today holding consultations on Iraq, resuming the discussions they had been having on how to proceed with that question. Correspondents would recall that the Council President, Celso L.N. Amorim (Brazil), on leaving the Council meeting yesterday, had said he would conduct bilateral consultations with different Council members. He was expected to report back during today's meeting.

Also today, the Spokesman continued, Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Heddi Annabi would brief Council members on the search mission to the site where the second United Nations plane had crashed in Angola. The mission had been there on Monday, and the preliminary findings had been issued to correspondents yesterday.

Mr. Eckhard then drew correspondents attention to a document (S/1999/25) "Summary statement by the Secretary-General on matters of which the Security Council is seized, and on the stage reached in their consideration", which was now available on the racks. It was dated 15 January and was an annual document.

The Secretary-General had begun his official visit to Belgium this morning, Mr. Eckhard said. The first item on his agenda had been a meeting with the families of the 10 Belgian peacekeepers killed in Rwanda in early April 1994. In a statement issued afterwards, the Secretary-General had paid tribute to peacekeepers killed in Rwanda, and had said he had been personally saddened by the loss. The text of that statement was available in the Spokesman's Office.

The Secretary-General had then had an audience with King Albert II, the Spokesman went on to say. After that, he had inaugurated the United Nations House in Brussels -- a facility that houses the various United Nations agencies working in Belgium. He had then met with the Presidents of the Belgium Senate and House of Representatives. They had discussed peacekeeping issues, such as rapid deployment, as well as political topics, such as Iraq and Rwanda. The two Presidents had expressed their support for the United Nations work in the fields of children's rights, small arms and human development. They had continued their discussions over a working lunch, in which other parliamentarians had also participated. This afternoon, he would hold further meetings with Belgian Government officials.

At The Hague weekly press briefing today, according to Mr. Eckhard, the Deputy Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, Graham Blewitt, had confirmed that the investigation into the Racak massacre was already under way, despite the fact that Chief Prosecutor Louise Arbour had not been granted access to investigate in Kosovo. Arrangements had been made to interview Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) monitors, and the Office of the Prosecutor was awaiting the reports from the Finnish forensic team, which had been performing autopsies on the victims.

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Mr. Blewitt had also said that the investigators who had still been in Skopje, the capital of The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, had arrived back in The Hague Mr. Eckhard continued. He had announced that Judge Arbour, Chief Prosecutor of the Tribunal, planned to participate in a debate on Kosovo at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg tomorrow, at the invitation of the Council. The weekly briefing summary was available in the Spokesman's Office.

Mr. Eckhard then turned to Tajikistan. He said the Special Representative of the Secretary-General, Jan Kubis, had met today with the Tajik President, Emomali Rakhmonov, to review the peace process. That meeting had been part of Mr. Kubis's ongoing contacts with the Tajik parties. After the meeting, Mr. Kubis had indicated that they had agreed to set up the implementation of the peace process, which had been very slow up until now.

President Rakhmonov and the Chairman of the Commission on National Reconciliation and leader of the United Tajik Opposition, Said Abdullo Nuri, had earlier reached a general agreement on all major issues pertaining to the peace process, even though they still differed on matters relating to appointments, Mr. Eckhard went on. Mr. Nuri had agreed to hold a joint meeting of the Commission and the Contact Group of countries concerned with the peace process, to undertake an overall assessment of the peace process. That meeting was expected to take place tomorrow.

Preliminary reports on the consequences of the earthquake from the United Nations Resident Coordinator in Colombia stated that approximately 700 people had died and 2,300 were injured as rescue operations continued, Mr. Eckhard said. Approximately 4,500 homes and 170 buildings were destroyed. There were no exact figures on damage to water, electric and gas supply systems, and there was, as yet, no evaluation of the damage to the road infrastructure. Problems with telecommunications persisted in most parts of the disaster zone.

Preliminary assessments showed the need for emergency supplies of tents, blankets, drinking water and generators, he continued. Cash was needed for the local purchase of those supplies. United Nations agencies on the ground, such as the World Food Programme (WFP) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), were evaluating immediate food, health and medical requirements. Thus far, the United Nations had released $200,000, and its disaster assessment teams were on standby awaiting a green light from Bogota. Canada, the European Union, France, Japan, Mexico, the Russian Federation, Spain, Panama and the United States had provided search, rescue and evaluation teams, cash and in-kind contributions. The latest situation report issued by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) was available in the Spokesman's Office.

The WFP had today confirmed the death of one of its Angolan staff members, who had been among the nine passengers and crew of the United Nations plane that had crashed in the central highlands of Angola on 2 January, Mr.

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Eckhard said. A United Nations search team had reached that crash site on Monday. The WFP staff member had become the third employee of the Organization to die in Angola in the last 12 months.

The Vienna-based United Nations International Drug Control Programme (UNDCP) would be setting up a new country office in Tehran, Iran, to boost cooperation in the common fight against the production, trafficking and abuse of illicit drugs, the Spokesman said. A Memorandum of Understanding had been signed yesterday in Vienna by the Secretary-General of Iran's Drug Control Headquarters, Mohammed Fellah, and Pino Arlacchi, the Executive Director of the United Nations Office of Drug Control and Crime Prevention. A press release on the signing was available in the Spokesman's Office.

Also available in his Office was a humanitarian update on the Great Lakes region of Africa issued by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Mr. Eckhard continued. He also had available a press release put out today by the Business-Humanitarian Forum -- a new association set up in Geneva to promote cooperation between the corporate sector and humanitarian organizations. The first meeting organized by the Forum met today, and brought together the chief executives of a number of international corporations, as well as the heads of humanitarian agencies. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Sadako Ogata, was co-convenor of that meeting.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) had announced today the appointment of Elena Martinez of Cuba as Assistant Administrator and Regional Director of the Regional Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean, with effect from 1 April this year, Mr. Eckhard said. She would be at the level of Assistant Secretary-General.

He informed correspondents that Barbados and Solomon Islands had yesterday ratified the Ottawa landmine treaty, bringing the total number of ratifications to 62. Today Mali had became the seventy-third country to sign the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

A big cheque had been received today from France for nearly $70 million, he noted, by which France became the twenty-eighth Member State to join the honour roll of countries that had paid in full their regular dues for 1999.

Mr. Eckhard reminded correspondents that the Permanent Representative of Germany to the United Nations, Dieter Kastrup, would take questions at the United Nations Correspondents Association (UNCA) club at 1:30 p.m. today. The Permanent Representative of France, Alain Dejammet, would be at the UNCA club tomorrow afternoon at 4:15 p.m. to speak about Iraq.

Asked whether, in the light of reported Indonesian proposals, the United Nations would publish its autonomy proposals for East Timor, Mr. Eckhard explained that things would continue as usual. The meeting previously

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scheduled for this week would go ahead. It was too early to assess the existing process in the light of the rather dramatic announcement this morning. Responding to a second question, he said he would try to establish whether the Secretary-General or his Personal Representative on East Timor, Jamsheed Marker, had been briefed in detail by Indonesia before the announcement had been made. Mr. Marker was at Headquarters for the meetings scheduled to commence tomorrow, the Spokesman said in response to a third question.

Asked whether the Secretary-General would facilitate a meeting, mentioned by President Alhaji Ahmad Kabbah of Sierra Leone in a letter addressed to the Secretary-General, between President Kabbah and the President of Liberia, Charles Taylor, the Spokesman said he would seek information and get back to the questioner.

Asked about travel plans and the agenda of the Secretary-General's Special Envoy on Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, the Spokesman explained that Mr. Brahimi was at Headquarters today, and that he would ask him about his plans. (He later told the correspondent that Mr. Brahimi was scheduled to travel to Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan and the Russian Federation in mid- February.)

The United Nations still had no personnel in Sierra Leone, Mr. Eckhard explained in response to another question. Operations were out of Conakry in Guinea. The United Nations was monitoring, as best it could, the situation inside Sierra Leone.

Asked for a reaction to a television programme on Rwanda screened on the local Public Broadcasting Service last night, Mr. Eckhard said he had not seen anything new in the programme. It had been a relatively balanced presentation of the reaction of the international community to the genocide in Rwanda. Iqbal Riza, the United Nations Chef de Cabinet, had spoken for the Secretariat in the programme and Mr. Eckhard had nothing to add.

Asked whether the Secretary-General was trying to ensure that Indonesia did not "precipitously abandon" East Timor, the Spokesman explained that the dramatic announcement of this morning was still being absorbed. The previously scheduled talks this week would continue.

The Secretary-General's Personal Representative on East Timor, Mr. Marker, had from the beginning taken the approach that his profile should be low and that the talks should be conducted with as much confidentiality as possible, Mr. Eckhard explained, in response to a request for a press briefing from Mr. Marker. That said, he would ask Mr. Marker if he would be prepared to brief correspondents. (It was later announced that Mr. Marker would not hold a briefing.)

Asked if anyone from United Nations Headquarters was looking into a reported World Bank investigation into missing money, Mr. Eckhard explained that, while under the Secretary-General relations between the United Nations and the World Bank had been very cooperative, he could not speak for the Bank.

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